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One-third of college students are from rural areas. They face specific challenges, and schools are recognizing that

Late last year, graduate students watched as legislators in the House debated giving them a hefty new tax bill: A version of the GOP tax plan proposed to treat tuition waivers as taxable income. Although that plan was later dropped, Congress is once again considering legislation that could affect graduate students’ bottom lines. And the […]

How do I fill out the FAFSA? What is a Pell Grant? Do I have to get a meal plan? How do I pay for housing?

Students move in to residences at Louisiana State University on Aug. 12 for the fall 2018 semester.(Photo: Eddy Perez/LSU Strategic Communications)

You might not know these answers if you haven't been in college in a while or if you're the first one in your family to consider it. Or you might go to a tiny school without a guidance counselor or someone to tell you higher education is a possibility.

People like Becky Durocher are trying to aniticipate their questions and provide answers.

"For rural students, the challenges are real," said Durocher, director of admissions at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux.

She said they could be at a high school that isn't fully staffed, meaning fewer people wearing more hats and less likely to be able to advise every student on life after high school.

The students might not know anything about college choice, that college is an option for them or that financial aid can be for everyone, she said.

"Financial aid was the big thing we didn't understand," said Bienelyn Brown, who is from the West Bank of New Orleans.

This was unfamiliar territory for her family, "because my mom never had to do any of that stuff," Brown said.

She's the first in her family to go to college, often referred to as being a first-generation student or "first-gen."

Brown and her parents drove the hour and a half to Nicholls more than once to get help from staff on such things as filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or setting up housing.

"I was worried about housing," Brown said. "You don't want to take out a loan, but you know you might have to."

Who are they?

Although most schools don't have a specific data set on rural students, combining enrollment and population figures helps to paint a picture.

Thirty-five of Louisiana's 64 parishes are classified as rural, according to 2014 data from the Louisiana Department of Health.

And the UL System has students from all of them — more than 21,000 from rural parishes, according to 2017 enrollment figures. That's about 23 percent of the system's almost 92,000 students.

And many of them, like Brown, are the first in their families to pursue education after high school. Her freshman class at Nicholls in Thibodaux is 63 percent first-gen. That's more than 800 of its 1,301 full-time freshmen.

In a less-populated but heavily industrial area of Louisiana, the school has seen similar percentages of first-gen students for years, said Jerad David, director of University Marketing and Communications at Nicholls.

"The number of first-generation students we have is astounding," David said.

That number has remained high because, for years, people could go straight from high school to a well-paying job in oil and gas, farming or another industry. That isn't always the case today. With changing markets and evolving technology, many of those jobs don't exist or require more training.

Navigating college can be hard, even if your parents went before you.

Stewart Lockett's parents went to college in Baton Rouge, where he would eventually move for higher education. They attended Southern University and experienced a smaller and different environment than he would encounter at the state's biggest university in 2015.

"There were tons of challenges I wasn't prepared for at LSU," said Lockett, now a senior and student body president of Louisiana State University.

The challenges are many.

Data show that rural high-schoolers are less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to go straight to college, a factor that can impact completion.

Fifty-nine percent of rural high school graduates go straight to college, compared to 62 percent of urban and 67 percent of suburban high school graduates, according to 2015 data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

Stewart Lockett, 22, is a New Iberia native and student body president at Louisiana State University. He will graduate in May with a degree in biological engineering.(Photo: LSU Office of Academic Affairs)

Lockett experienced a bit of culture shock when he moved to the state capital, a challenge that that eventually helped him grow as a person.

Baton Rouge is about seven times bigger than his hometown of New Iberia, but it is also much more diverse, especially on campus.

He attended high school with about 1,500 students, who primarily were either black or white, he said.

"Some of the big ones were social differences," he said. "The climate and voice was different ... and there was the exposure to a lot of things not in high school, like nontraditional students. That includes transgender students, veterans, older students."

Charles McClintock III also moved to a bigger city than his hometown when he went away to college.

He graduated with 41 classmates at Logansport High School in 2015 and now is a senior at Northwestern State in Natchitoches. Its population is more than 18,000, compared to Logansport's 1,550.

"We've drawn some good students out of really tiny schools," said Jana Lucky, director of enrollment management at Northwestern. "We get students from almost every parish in the state, and some parishes are really small."

That doesn't happen by accident. Lucky and her team of nine recruiters seek them out. Each recruiter has a "territory" and a mission to visit every school within it.

"We believe there is a diamond in every rough," Lucky said. "We don't just go to the big schools. ... We believe everyone should have access."

Northwestern also brings students to campus to see it for themselves.

The university had 50 students from rural Sabine and Red River parishes on campus in July.

Northwestern State University (NSU) and Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance (LOSFA), A program of the Board of Regents, partnered to host a Louisiana GEAR UP (LA GEAR UP) summer camp from Monday, July 23, 2018 through Friday, July 27, 2018.(Photo: Courtesy of LOSFA)

Louisiana GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) offers a summer camp that connects teenagers with university recruiting, financial aid, admissions, academic departments and student support staff.

"Many of the students from rural areas don't get the opportunity to see this," said Elizabeth Sanchez, regional coordinator for the Louisiana Office for Student Financial Assistance. LOSFA and NSU sponsored the camp.

Camp leaders are hoping to take some of the bad surprises out of going to college at 18, and being on your own for the first time. That can be a lot for any student to handle at one time.

"A lot of times, the challenge is they want to go to college and don't necessarily expect how big it is or how many people there are," Sanchez said. "They end up going and are in shock."

Steven Gruesbeck, director of the Office of Service-Learning at NSU, said the camp teaches students how to navigate processes like applications and financial aid while also showing prospective students "who we are and how we can help them achieve their academic and career goals."

"This information makes them stronger applicants," Gruesbeck said. "We hope that when it is time for our campers to apply for college, that NSU will be at the top of their list."

The efforts seem to pay off for the schools, too.

"We probably have more students at Northwestern from rural areas than from about anywhere else," said Frances Conine, interim vice president for the Student Experience and Dean of Students at Northwestern State.

Northwestern State University (NSU) and Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance (LOSFA), A program of the Board of Regents, partnered to host a Louisiana GEAR UP (LA GEAR UP) summer camp from Monday, July 23, 2018 through Friday, July 27, 2018.(Photo: Leigh Guidry/USA TODAY Network)

Nicholls does the same with Tour Tuesdays Powered by Entergy. The company partnered with the university two years ago to cover costs for a charter bus to shuttle high school students to campus from a nine-parish service area in southeastern Louisiana.

The university has been bringing students to campus for years, but the partnership allowed efforts to ramp up, Durocher said.

"Many of these students don't necessarily have a mom, dad, aunt, uncle ... nanny or parrain who can take off from work and bring them to campus," Durocher said. "For some, that means not being able to put food on the table. Some were not visiting because they had no means or no support or no reliable car."

Being there can be eye-opening for students.

"It's the difference between reading an essay about Paris or being in Paris," said Durocher, who has worked in admissions since 1991. "One is life-changing, and one you might fall asleep."

They tour campus, learn about financial aid and admissions and all the how-to's. They talk to faculty and current students and see dorms and the cafeteria.

"You never know what it's going to be that makes the difference for a student, what will motivate them," Durocher said.

She said the visits have been life-changing for some students and their families.

"For many we hear 'I didn't think college was possible,'" Durocher said.

There's still work to do.

In rural areas, fewer than one in five adults 25 and older have a bachelor's degree, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

"When you look at attainment gaps in Louisiana, the rural population definitely is one of those categories," said Jim Henderson, president and CEO of the University of Louisiana System. "As part of our plan to aggressively boost educational attainment in Louisiana, we have to find strategies to better serve rural students."

That's why colleges are finding programs like GEAR UP and Tour Tuesdays to reach into rural pockets of Louisiana and show students that some form of post-secondary education might be for them.

If transportation is the issue, perhaps the answer is online courses and distance learning, Henderson said. But that's not always possible in rural areas either, as bandwidth and internet access can be limited.

Other supports are more process-oriented, he said, like scheduling classes that work with rural commuters' lifestyles.

Louisiana's public universities are spread across the state, many of them in or near rural regions.

"The presence of our universities in the midst of rural areas makes them essential access points for rural populations," said Cami Geisman, vice president for Marketing and Communication for the UL System.

Then there's recruiting and the emphasis on face-to-face interaction.

"Much of the area that Southeastern (Louisiana University in Hammond) serves is classified as rural. As such, our recruiting practices are intentionally geared to serve students in rural areas," said Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management Kay Maurin.

"It has been our experience that personal visits to schools in rural areas to meet directly with high school students and their counselors is beneficial."